In short and in plain language
This article is about your page on dementia care. How can your care service explain this help well?
Relatives often read for a long time before they call. In that time, your page is often the first contact.
The page should say clearly how you help. The words should be plain and should not gloss over things.
The page should not promise what care cannot do. The article also explains how to show the costs on the page.
It helps to offer a way to reach you without a phone call. We build this page for you.
When a family receives a dementia diagnosis, the search for a care service rarely starts the same day. First come weeks of reading, comparing and weighing up whether everyday life can still be carried alone. At the end of 2025 around 1.8 million (German Alzheimer Association) people were living with dementia in Germany, and for most of them the decision about support is taken at the kitchen table, not in a counselling centre. During those weeks your website is often the only contact with your service. How it explains dementia care helps decide whether reading turns into a call.
Key takeaways
- At the end of 2025 around 1.8 million (German Alzheimer Association) people were living with dementia in Germany. Dementia support is everyday business for home care providers, not a marginal case.
- 84 per cent (Stiftung ZQP 2017) of respondents wanted to learn more about specific aspects of dementia. That is exactly the gap a good service page closes.
- 68 per cent (Stiftung ZQP 2017) named the family doctor as the first place to turn to, while only 22 per cent named a care service. Explaining early means being considered early.
- Benefit law supplies the outline: orientation, daily structure, communication and cognitive activation are listed as care support measures in Section 36 (2) SGB XI.
- The relief amount of up to 131 euros (SGB XI) per month helps fund support services and therefore belongs in the cost section.
- Claims about outcomes are delicate: Section 3 of the German Medicines Advertising Act bars attributing a therapeutic effect to a treatment that it does not have.
Why relatives call later when dementia is involved
The figures show how common the situation is. Of the roughly 1.8 million people living with dementia at the end of 2025, around 1.2 million (German Alzheimer Association) were women and 0.6 million were men; about 1.7 million of them were aged 65 or over. In 2023 an estimated 357,000 (German Alzheimer Association) people aged 65 and above developed dementia. For your website that means the families reading your service page are not a small group. They are a considerable share of everyone looking for care at all.
At the same time, by far the largest part of care is provided at home. In December 2023 almost 5.7 million (Federal Statistical Office) people were classed as in need of care, and 86 per cent (Federal Statistical Office) of them were looked after at home. How confident those families feel is another matter: in a representative population survey from 2017, 61 per cent (Stiftung ZQP 2017) said they personally knew at least one person with dementia, and 50 per cent considered themselves rather poorly able to help someone affected. 35 per cent (Stiftung ZQP 2017) felt poorly informed about dementia. The delay before the call has less to do with price than with uncertainty about what is possible at all. We described what relatives expect at this point in more detail in content for a care website aimed at relatives.
The first search term is rarely dementia
What dementia care means in benefit law
Many pages fail because they describe support with atmosphere instead of substance. Yet the law provides a workable outline. Section 36 (2) SGB XI expressly lists as care support measures the support with orientation, with structuring the day, with communication, with maintaining social contacts and with activities that meet individual needs, plus measures for cognitive activation. The joint circular issued by the care insurance funds assigns these measures to areas 2, 3 and 6 (GKV-Spitzenverband) of the assessment instrument. Writing the service page along those terms describes precisely what is billed and audited. Our article on the guide page for the care level application covers how that path begins.
- Benefits in kind under Section 36 SGB XI: body-related care, care support and help with running the household within one budget per care level.
- Relief amount under Section 45b SGB XI: up to 131 euros (SGB XI) per month, earmarked for relief and everyday support. Our article on the 2026 relief budget shows how enquiries grow out of it.
- Everyday support services under Section 45a SGB XI: group or in-home support, relief for carers, help with coping with daily life.
- Additional support and activation under Section 43b SGB XI: in residential settings a separate entitlement alongside general care.
- Care counselling under Section 7a SGB XI: an individual entitlement to advice and assistance in choosing benefits.
- Assessment: the modules covering cognitive and communicative abilities and behaviour and psychological problems together carry 15 per cent (SGB XI) of the score, and only the higher of the two weighted values counts.
The six questions relatives bring with them
A dementia care page has a different job from a basic care page. It has to reduce uncertainty first and sell services second. In the 2017 survey, 44 per cent (Stiftung ZQP 2017) named dealing and communicating with people affected as a topic they wanted to know more about; options for planning ahead were named most often at 58 per cent, information on the course of the illness least often at 40 per cent. Relatives are looking less for a prognosis than for practical knowledge. The six questions below cover what tends to come up first in initial conversations. Answering them saves half the follow-up queries later. Our article on online booking for care counselling fits the scheduling side of this.
What do you actually do?
Not support, but the action: structuring the day together, reminding about appointments and tablets, helping with orientation in the flat, holding conversations that do not correct.
Who comes into the house?
Changing faces are a problem of their own with dementia. State how many regular contact persons are planned and how you brief stand-ins.
How long is a visit?
Name the time slots instead of hiding them. Relatives work out whether the support carries their working day or covers only half an hour.
What does the care fund pay?
Benefit amount per care level, relief amount, respite and short-term care kept clearly apart, plus the self-payment in a worked example.
What happens when it gets hard?
Evening restlessness, refusal of outside help, a tendency to wander: name these situations factually and describe how your team handles them.
Who can I reach and when?
Name, direct line, hours and a commitment on the call-back window. A form on its own rarely suffices in this situation.
Language: clear without glossing over
Tone decides whether a page is read or closed. Two mistakes are especially common. The first is trivialising: if a page speaks only of loving attention, relatives do not recognise their own situation and conclude that your service has no experience of difficult days. The second is dramatising: describing the course of the illness as decline drives readers away. Between the two lies a factual language that names actions and admits limits. For families with another first language it is also worth looking at a multilingual care website, because with dementia a great deal runs through language.
- Write about people with dementia, not about dementia patients. The wording is standard among professionals and relatives notice it.
- Replace adjectives with actions. Instead of empathetic support: we stay in the conversation even when the answer is not correct.
- Name difficult situations in the words families use: restlessness at night, refusal of help, repeated questions, a tendency to wander.
- Keep sentences short and set one subheading per question. The page is often read at night on a phone; our article on mobile optimisation for relatives explains how to prepare for that.
- Explain every legal term in half a sentence the first time it appears. Relief amount, respite care and care level are routine for professionals and new to families.
- Check the page with a screen reader. What stumbles when heard also stumbles when read, and accessible implementation helps twice over here.
What the page may promise
Dementia is a field where advertising claims quickly become legally risky. Section 3 of the German Medicines Advertising Act declares misleading advertising inadmissible and names as an example the case where procedures or treatments are credited with a therapeutic effect they do not have. It is equally inadmissible to create the false impression that success can be expected with certainty. Sentences such as support that halts the progression therefore do not belong on the page. Describe instead what your team does and which effects are observable in daily life. We collected the remaining mandatory details in the legally compliant care website.
- No statement about the course of the illness that your service cannot substantiate. Cognitive activation is a service, not a therapy with a promised result.
- No outcome promises in figures. Wording such as more quality of life within four weeks reads as a promise of certain success.
- Describe qualifications precisely. Training as a gerontopsychiatric specialist is not the same as a two-day additional course.
- Present on-call availability only as it is organised. Our article on presenting round-the-clock care sets out what to watch for.
- Use photographs from your own premises and document consent; our article on authentic photos on a care website shows why that carries weight.
- Publish testimonials only with written consent and without invented names.
The structure that holds
A dementia care page needs an order that follows the reader's train of thought: recognition first, then services, then money, then contact. Mention money too early and the page feels cold; mention it too late and mistrust sets in. The outline below has proved itself in projects and can be slotted into an existing care service page structure without rebuilding the navigation.
| Section of the page | Question behind it | What belongs in it |
|---|---|---|
| Opening | Am I in the right place? | One sentence naming dementia care without dramatising the diagnosis |
| Services | What do you actually do? | Orientation, daily structure, communication and cognitive activation under Section 36 (2) SGB XI |
| Process | How does this start? | Initial conversation, getting to know each other, regular contact persons, time frame per visit |
| Costs | What does the care fund pay? | Benefit amount per care level, relief amount of 131 euros, self-payment |
| Relief | What do I get out of it? | Respite care, short-term care, day care, counselling, group activities |
| Contact | Who can I reach and when? | Name, direct line, hours and a call-back commitment in hours rather than days |
The table doubles as a checklist for what you already have. Open your current service page and delete every row that is present. What remains is the work list. In most cases the process and the costs are missing while the values section appears twice. If your organisation also runs a day care centre, a reference belongs in the relief section; our article on the day care website that fills vacancies describes how such a page generates occupancy.
Making costs and funding visible
The cost question is where most pages duck out. Yet the amounts are public and easy to present. Section 36 (3) SGB XI states 796 euros (SGB XI) per calendar month for home care assistance at care level 2 and 1,497 euros at care level 3; on top of that comes the relief amount of up to 131 euros (SGB XI) per month, which people in home care may use for relief and everyday support. Putting those three figures side by side and adding a worked example removes the biggest obstacle to an enquiry. Our article on the care cost calculator on the website shows an interactive route to the same end.
- Separate the fund's contribution from the self-payment visually. A combined total looks higher than it is.
- Name the relief amount with its purpose, not only its size. Many families do not know that it also covers support services.
- Show a worked example for a typical volume of support, marked as an example and dated.
- Point to care counselling under Section 7a SGB XI instead of presenting it as your own service. The entitlement lies with the care fund.
- Keep the amounts current. An outdated figure on the cost page costs more trust than a missing one; our website care service takes that over on request.
A page is no substitute for a conversation
Turning explanation into an enquiry
Relatives who had already supported or cared for someone made most use, in the 2017 survey, of professional care counselling at 35 per cent (Stiftung ZQP 2017), followed by short-term care at 28 per cent, respite care at 27 per cent and day care at 23 per cent. Just under a quarter, 24 per cent (Stiftung ZQP 2017), said they had used no support service at all so far. That is the real opportunity of a service page: it reaches people who do not yet know what is available. The page therefore does not need to push. It needs to sort.
- Offer two depths of entry: an initial conversation for the decided and a short printable overview for the hesitant.
- Name one person with role and full name. Enquiries rise when it is clear who picks up.
- Write availability in plain words, including weekend hours.
- Summarise the page in five lines at the end so relatives can pass it on within the family.
- Watch which subheading draws the most views and write the next article on that topic.
In the end there is a simple test. Read your service page the way a daughter reads it at half past ten in the evening: phone in hand, after a long day, wondering whether tomorrow morning will be any better. If she finds an action, an amount and a name within the first twenty lines, the page has done its job. If she finds only attitude, she usually does not call but reads on somewhere else. The difference between the two versions is rarely a question of budget. It is a question of order.
Sources and Studies
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